Abstract

A "reading" of archival material on the Rani of Sirmur shows the soldiers and administrators of the East India Company constructing the object of representations that becomes the reality of India. The Rani emerges only when she is needed in the space of imperial production. Caught between the patriarchy of her husband, the Raja of Sirmur, and the imperialism of the British who deposed him, she is in an almost allegorical position. Both patriarchal subj ect- formation and imperialist object-constitution efface the dubious place of the free will of the sexed subject as female. In the cracks between the production of the archives and indigenous patriarchy, today distanced by the waves of hegemonic "feminism," there is no "real Rani" to be found